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Thanks for your story Matt, we have all been in that same hunched over position taking pictures of something so small you won’t know if it’s sharp until you get home and look on the computer. Thank goodness for digital especially when shooting fast moving subjects! Such beautiful colors with a great bokeh and a tack sharp subject, nice job!

If you have a photo you would like to have featured, please email me at submissionsdigitalcamfancom . Every Wednesday I’ll spotlight a new photo. Don’t forget to include links to your photography site, Flickr, twitter you get the point, we want to be able to see your other work! For more detailed info on how to, check out the Featured Photo detail page!

I consider this one of my better photographs, and I’m pretty satisfied with it, but maybe not for the usual reasons. Whatever level of technical accomplishment it displays is fairly accidental, my own role in that accomplishment fairly small. And these, I think, are facts worth recalling whenever the role of alchemy in photography is in question. Technique is great, control, necessary, but ultimately the quality of a photo with any degree of candidness is to some extent down to forces outside the control of the photographer.

All that to say, I took this shot walking to the corner store, without any particular plan, a camera slung over my shoulder just in case. Walking along the sidewalk, looking down I saw some bees swarming around a flowering plant, and stopped to grab a snap. One photo turned into several as I struggled to focus, hunched down on one knee. People swerved around me, walking by. A feeling of frustration grew.

Several more clicks and that was enough – I’d had it. Without a clear sense of whether I’d got a decent shot I continued on my way. Only later, scrolling through the series of imperfect images, did I see something special, something close to what I wanted.

And this possibility, this luxurious image volume, is one of the great bedrock strengths of digital – the freedom to snap, and snap some more. To keep what’s good, and valuable, and discard the rest.

The colors are magical in this photograph, they just jump right out at you! With such a unique perspective up high above the water, the sun just setting. Perfection! The story that follows is a good reminder when you’re driving towards your destination and the storm clouds are forming, don’t turn back just yet. One never knows what will happen once you arrive… Thank-you Reetom for sharing your photograph and story! What a perfect moment to share with your family.

If you have a photo you would like to have featured, please email me at submissionsdigitalcamfancom . Every Wednesday I’ll spotlight a new photo. Don’t forget to include links to your photography site, Flickr, twitter you get the point, we want to be able to see your other work! For more detailed info on how to, check out the Featured Photo detail page!

This was probably one of my most memorable visit to the Great McWay Falls, Big Sur. There is more than one reason to it but above all, it was a fun filled family trip along CA1 South. I had been to the McWay Falls many times and every time I was welcomed with a surprise. It was either a beautiful sunset or an overcast sky. This time, I kind of had an idea about these beautiful flowers at McWay falls but wasn’t very sure if they will be in full bloom when I am there. But was it a chance worth taking? Driving 4 hrs all the way to Big Sur? I did promise my family a magnificent view of the falls, something they have never seen before. My wife Olympiya had been telling me for last 2 years that she wants to visit the waterfall, but some reason I always ended up going alone. And that’s because of all the 50 other things that I have to do on the way.

So finally, I crossed my fingers and turned on the ignition and headed to Big Sur with my wife and my in-laws. The moment I hit CA1 my worst nightmare came true, cloudy, an overcast sky and the Sun, nowhere to be seen. At this point, I did feel it was a wrong decision to go to Big Sur and at least I should have checked the weather. With no other backup plan and since we already drove 2hrs, we decided to keep moving to our destination. The fog kept moving in and out of the CA 1 and we kept rolling and finally we decided to take a break at the beautiful café at Big Sur, Café Kevah. We had coffee and snacks, clicked some nice family photos and back on the raod to McWay Falls. After another 20mns of drive, we finally reached the parking lot and there it was, the McWay Falls at its best. I couldn’t wait a minute in the car, just jumped out of it, picked up my camera gear and hit the trail. After a few minutes of walking, we were there and there it was. The beauty and the glory could hardly be defined in words and no picture could do any justice to the view, though I tried my best. The rays from the setting sun hit the face of the waterfall directly and lit it up in orange and gold. The turquoise water and those strands of flowers with the beautiful sunset swept us off our feet. I smiled to it and realized I just lived through the promise I had made to my wife.

This is why we always carry our camera! When a sunset like this happens you only have a few minutes to compose and take your picture before the rays disappear or the clouds block your view. Beautifully composed, and the colors are beautiful! Thanks for sharing Guy!

If you have a photo you would like to have featured, please email me at submissionsdigitalcamfancom . Every Wednesday I’ll spotlight a new photo. Don’t forget to include links to your photography site, Flickr, twitter you get the point, we want to be able to see your other work! For more detailed info on how to, check out the Featured Photo detail page!

As a photographer living in Southern Maryland I have many favorite places to shoot. One of those places is Solomons Island, Maryland. Solomons Island is small town along the lower Patuxent River that is known for boats, crabs, oysters, maritime heritage and beautiful sunsets. I have spent a lot of time in Solomons on the beach, walking the boardwalk and shooting photos. This particular evening I had a few photos to deliver to a client in Solomons I had taken abroad a Chesapeake Bay workboat the Roughwater. As I left my house a few minutes from Solomons Island I noticed a sky filled with amazing clouds. I decided I needed to grab my camera bag just in case there was a good opportunity – I’m glad I did.

I made my delivery at the waterman’s dock a little before sunset. While I was talking to the crew of the Roughwater I noticed the sky really becoming interesting. So I left the dock and drove to the nearby boardwalk where I grabbed my camera and began shooting the amazing sky. The rays of light and the color were really amazing that night. The Thomas Johnson bridge in the background has been a favorite target of mine for many years and this night was a fantastic subject.

This shot has become a fan favorite and has been one of my most popular photographs on Facebook and Flickr. I hope you enjoy viewing it. Guy

This photo is so awesome… Reminder bring your camera every where and don’t forget to look up! Suzanne did a great job capturing this installation by the design studio ball nogues. Love the reflections and contrast. I bet it looks different every minute of the day as the light changes! Thanks for sharing Suzanne!

If you have a photo you would like to have featured, please email me at submissionsdigitalcamfancom . Every Wednesday I’ll spotlight a new photo. Don’t forget to include links to your photography site, Flickr, twitter you get the point, we want to be able to see your other work! For more detailed info on how to, check out the Featured Photo detail page!

I was wandering around Santa Monica, CA with a friend when I looked up and saw these large stainless steel marbles above a parking garage. I learned later that it is an installation by the design studio ball nogues www.ball-nogues.com. I had a fixed and fairly wide angle lens on my Nikon, which was perfect for the shots.

I took many photos of the structure and had a lot of fun processing them when I got home. I love the clean yet chaotic look of the piece.

Wow! Talk about standing on top of the world! I can only imagine what if felt like as this scene developed. Breathtaking… The composition is perfect, the touch of blue in the sky – love it!

You couldn’t find a better first quote to begin this story “A good photograph is knowing where to stand”! Thank you for sharing this amazing photograph Fabio! Always expect the unexpected…

If you have a photo you would like to have featured, please email me at submissionsdigitalcamfancom . Every Wednesday I’ll spotlight a new photo. Don’t forget to include links to your photography site, Flickr, twitter you get the point, we want to be able to see your other work! For more detailed info on how to, check out the Featured Photo detail page!

“A good photograph is knowing where to stand” Ansel Adams said. This is a dogma I tried (and keep trying) to follow every time I feel the need to go out with my camera to take some landscapes. At the same time know the place where you’re going is a little challenge, even if you’re not new to that area. In fact “knowing a place” isn’t only a geographic notion, but an ensemble of different disciplines as meteorology, astronomical geography, botany and so on.

Thanks to the web nowadays we have everything we need with a mouse click, but most of the time it isn’t enough yet due to a lot of different factors, so the first step to do is to explore. Sometimes this phase could result a little bit frustrating, but sometimes offers us incredible and unexpected scenery. This is the case of this shot, taken during the recon of Campo Imperatore, a natural reserve in middle of Italy.

I was wandering around the reserve, looking for some good composition to exploit during the sunset when my eyes was caught by the fast growing clouds around the Gran Sasso mount. Even if the light condition wasn’t the one I was looking for, the weather was almost perfect for a good pic.

I was working with an ultrawide lens (with the target to obtain an image that would gives the idea of the great space of the reserve) so I’ve changed the lens to a mid-zoom one that could gives me the opportunity to isolate the main subject (the mount) taking advantage of the clouds help.

So, moral of the story: when exploring a site always keep your eyes open; despite of your initial ideas you can always find some great, unexpected, scenery to photograph. Of course is fundamental to carry with you all your lenses: it’s an hard work, but it could reveal a priceless one!

Talk about everything coming together for this amazing shot! The curious sheep except for one, the row of trees fading away into fog. Yet if you read John’s story that was not the intent of his original vision. Sometimes when we have a plan we have to be like water and flow into a new vision on the spot. I don’t know what the other photograph would have looked like had the weather been a bit different or the sheep not there, but this one is perfect in every way! Thanks for sharing John!

If you have a photo you would like to have featured, please email me at submissionsdigitalcamfancom . Every Wednesday I’ll spotlight a new photo. Don’t forget to include links to your photography site, Flickr, twitter you get the point, we want to be able to see your other work! For more detailed info on how to, check out the Featured Photo detail page!

On this particular foggy day I had intended to photograph trees in the mist, it tuned out the location I had chosen now had a herd of sheep in the field. Initially these sheep showed a curious interest in me and my camera mounted on a tripod, gathering around me and staring at the camera as if posing, the beeps coming from the cameras timer were enough to hold their attention long enough to get some interesting images. The surrounding mist created an eerie atmosphere and a sense of seclusion. My equipment included a modest Kodak Z885 capable of bracketing exposures as I had intended to blend 3 shots and produce some HDR images, however during processing it was clear to me that these images required a more subtle approach with the even lighting and the fog obscuring any distracting background black and white was the way to go. So with a single exposure I was getting fantastic tonal range and a very pleasing end result.

The colors are amazing in this picture… They complement each other, the clouds the light, love it! To be able to see the sunset / sunrise out your window every night would be truly amazing. Most people can go their whole life and only see a handful of amazing sunsets. Thank you Lidie for sharing this beautiful sunset!

If you have a photo you would like to have featured, please email me at submissionsdigitalcamfancom . Every Wednesday I’ll spotlight a new photo. Don’t forget to include links to your photography site, Flickr, twitter you get the point, we want to be able to see your other work! For more detailed info on how to, check out the Featured Photo detail page!

My name is Lidie and I’m a 41 year old housewife and mother of a beautiful 8 year old girl.
I’m so lucky that I live in the nord of Italy at Caselle Torinese near the big city Turin.
We have here almost every night the most credible sunsets. In the wintertime also the sunrises are amazing.
This means that every night I’m watching out and wait what for surprise the sun will bring me this night. The direction is every time the same but the sky is never the same. Every night it has it own colors and this is what I like so much about these beautiful sunsets.

I have read a lot of inspiring stories, but none have touched me as much as this one. There is a line within where I had to stop reading and really think about it before I came back to finish reading. I would tell you what line, but I want you to enjoy the entire story. The journey Steve went on produced this amazing photograph you see below, the color and composition are amazing! Thank-you Steve!

If you have a photo you would like to have featured, please email me at submissionsdigitalcamfancom . Every Wednesday I’ll spotlight a new photo. Don’t forget to include links to your photography site, Flickr, twitter you get the point, we want to be able to see your other work! For more detailed info on how to, check out the Featured Photo detail page!

Divorcing The Mind’s Eye:

My introduction to photography came to me in 1974 in the form of a high school dark room. In those bleak times we were using chemicals instead of software to develop our photographs and the results for me were rather drab. I am sure this was due in part to my own lack of skills and devotion; after all I was 16 years old and had other things to occupy my thoughts and ambitions. It wasn’t until I was re-introduced to the world of photography some 30 years later that I began to rekindle my passion for our beloved craft. That motivation came from a fellow work mate who was taking some very impressive portrait shots with a Nikon D700 coupled to a Nikkor 70-200mm lens. Up until then I was not paying a lot of attention to the digital advancements that had taken place over the course of the prior three decades. After my friend loaned me his D700 to take home for the weekend I began to experience the instant gratification benefit of digital photography and I was hooked. I went out like most wanna be photographers probably do and bought myself a camera that I could not afford and started down the path of hardware acquisition. I got myself a D300S with a couple of kit lenses consisting of a 17-55mm DX and a 70-300mm DX. This desire to acquire led me down the path of financial despair and disappointment. My pictures simply did not meet my expectations. I told myself that it must be the glass. After all I had acquired a fairly expensive semi-pro camera body with a couple kit lenses that I was convinced was the limiting factor. This new line of thought created a lens buying frenzy that lasted a couple years which once again (and to no surprise) did not yield the results I was seeking.

Slowly through the determined act of shooting a boat load of images I began to discover that composition was in fact more important and influential to the final product than hardware. Can you image that! The realization that I could not buy my way into the euphoric state of self-satisfaction I sought with my images was a sobering realization. After that I began to study light and composition and actually took time to set up my shots. I discovered that great shots are not a product of happenstance and understanding how the light (or absence of) could affect my images began to motivate me and give me hope that maybe one day I could digitally reproduce the image I conjured in my mind’s eye. This may be a good time to point out that my artistic passion was (and still is) for Landscape photography.

Armed with this newly found confidence I sold my nine different DX lenses and bought myself a D800 and a Tokina 17-55mm Wide angle FX lens. Working on the foundation of improved composition and the knowledge of recognizing light I went back to what I loved, Wide angle landscape photography. Knowing now that I was not limited by my hardware I started to refine my compositions and seek better locations and camera angles. I started shooting from different heights and at different focal ranges with narrow apertures and a host of other significant alterations from my normal patterns.

This is the part of the story when I would like to say that all these changes and photographic revelations delivered the self satisfaction I so desperately sought. How I wish that were true! It simply was not! My photography had improved slightly (at least I thought so), but I could not cross that threshold that allowed me to view my own work and feel satisfied that I had captured the image in my mind’s eye and produced it digitally for all to see and admire. I could see what others were doing on the Web and I became envious and jealous of the superior talent and started to become discouraged and began questioning my ability as an artist.

This story does have a happy ending however. At least for me, because ultimately I am the only one who has to be happy with my work. This is of course not to say that I do not welcome, appreciate or desire the praise of others, especially from my mentors and fellow photographers. I would be lying through my teeth if I did not admit that recognition always feels good. So! On to the happy ending and the point of this story of woe. I achieved my artistic and photographic goals a few years back and finally began creating the images my scrutinizing inner self longed to see. This happened after a casual reply to a comment I made on an image taken by a fellow photographer whose photographs I greatly admire. He shared one sentence of wisdom from his own 40 years of experience that changed the way I craft my images and opened the creative door to my own self-satisfaction with my work. The line went like this, “as photographers we must divorce ourselves from the ideal image (the one our mind see’s) and learn to see the literal image (the one the camera see’s)”.

After digesting this expression of thought I realized that I was trying to do exactly what he had described. Whenever I would find myself in some amazing area with all kinds of photographic possibilities, I would take in everything my eye could capture and attempt to re-create it in digital form. The camera does not see things the same way we do! Now I look at things as if my eyes were diopters, masking out the undesirable and seeing from a perspective that only a camera could. If we can fully understand, adopt and implement the meaning of that simple statement I believe anyone afflicted with the same artistic hurdles I suffered from can achieve their photographic goals.

We create a photograph as we look for light and shadows. This amazing photo by Akshat Tewari captured both the light and shadows, but also the texture and shapes. Thank-you so much for sharing. When I see a photograph like this it inspires me to not only look at the shape I am photographing, but the shadows at my feet. To look for a photograph where the light touches the shadows…

If you have a photo you would like to have featured, please email me at submissionsdigitalcamfancom . Every Wednesday I’ll spotlight a new photo. Don’t forget to include links to your photography site, Flickr, twitter you get the point, we want to be able to see your other work! For more detailed info on how to, check out the Featured Photo detail page!

Recently I was out shooting over the weekend, which is when I saw this. I visited Qutub Minar, Delhi, India hoping to capture some nice architectural shots and so were the others.
It was a bright sunny morning and there was this one guy trying to capture the architectural beauty of the ‘Alai Darwaza’.

The Shadows of the ‘Alai Darwaza’ and its shooter created this magical effect on the textured floor.
Like the three basic elements of any photo are: Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO; likewise I feel the three prominant pillars on which this photo stands are:
(i) The shadow of ‘Alai Darwaxa’ – depicting its architectural beauty
(ii) The shadow of ‘The Shooter’ – pointing his lens towards the marvelling architecture
(iii) The ‘Textured Floor’ – embracing the beauty of the shadows

If any of the three basic elements are missing in a photo the picture looses its meaning, likewise if any of these three prominent pillars (subjects) wouldn’t have been there in the picture, the click would have lost its look and feel.

I think we have all felt “the dip” where you just feel your pictures aren’t the best they can be. Life happens, things come up and you feel like you’re not getting any better. Makes me think of this info graphic Stages of a photographer, at least that’s how I feel sometimes. Then you take a picture that feels right and it’s like coming home again.

This capture is perfect – the light, the composition, the colors. Very inspiring story to keep moving forward and you will be rewarded with a photograph like this one! Thank-you!

If you have a photo you would like to have featured, please email me at submissionsdigitalcamfancom . Every Wednesday I’ll spotlight a new photo. Don’t forget to include links to your photography site, Flickr, twitter you get the point, we want to be able to see your other work! For more detailed info on how to, check out the Featured Photo detail page!

This shot was a turning point for me in my photography. I was having trouble with my camera, my 1st dSLR, a Canon t3. You see, I like to photograph all sorts of different things, so I change lenses probably more than I should and more often than not, I am changing them outside in the wind. Because of this, I wound up with dust in my camera and on my sensor. Since I am always learning and experimenting, and because money was , and usually is, tight, I decided to try to learn how to clean my own camera and sensor. I will never do that again! All of the shots after had major spots and smears on them! So for about a week before I shot this, I was really disappointed in my shots and was losing interest in trying quickly.

On the morning that this shot was taken, I had just about given up on photography. I woke up on this morning very early, and walked out on my deck and saw that the sun hadn’t come up yet. I decided to give my passion one last try. I grabbed my camera and jumped in my car. I drove until I found the perfect spot to watch the sunrise. Timing was perfect and the light was beautiful. I was actually feeling excited about the shots I was getting! When I got home, I couldn’t wait to see them larger. Of course, there were still spots that I had to fix in processing, but I loved the light, and the color and especially loved the tree. Seeing that the shot was exactly what I had wanted and that the spots were fixable gave me new hope and brought new life into my desire to take photos. I made a conscious decision that day to pull myself up, brush myself off and get back into what I love. And that is why I titled this shot “It’s a New Day”. It was not only literally a new day, but it was a new day in my photography as well.